Ratner received a scholarship to
Cornell University in 1920 as a
chemistry major. As the only woman in most of her classes, and due to her shy nature, she had a difficult time sharing her experiences and ideas with her colleagues. After graduating in 1924, Ratner was employed in a Pediatrics laboratory at
Long Island College Hospital in New York City. As a graduate student, Ratner gravitated towards biochemistry, which in the early 1930s was mainly preoccupied with
physiology and
organic chemistry. She was accepted as a Ph.D. student by
Hans Thacher Clarke in the Department of Biochemistry at the
College of Physicians and Surgeons at
Columbia University. The admission requirement to the department at the time was simply to "survive an interview with H.T. [Clarke], at the end of which the potential student was immediately informed of the outcome." In 1932, in collaboration with C. A. Weymuller, she published a study of
the acid-base metabolism of a normal child on diets that increase in fat content. Together, they discussed the "seventeen different analytical methods were used for determination of a wide variety of parameters in blood serum and feces." After receiving her doctorate, Ratner had difficulty obtaining a research position because many labs did not hire women. Eventually she was hired by
Rudolf Schoenheimer of the College of Physicians and Surgeons to investigate the metabolic processes of nitrogen compounds. she became interested in new aspects of nitrogen metabolism. In 1946, Ratner was hired as an assistant professor of pharmacology at the
New York University School of Medicine. The following year she published a book on the mechanism of the formation of
arginine from
citrulline, a subject which would occupy her studies for the next four decades. She was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974. Ratner became a staff member of the Department of Biochemistry at the
Public Health Research Institute of New York in the mid-1950s. She retired in 1992 at the age of 89. ==Honors==